


An Eluvian Darkly: The Question

by wargoddess



Series: An Eluvian Darkly [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, PTSD, Previous Cullen/Meredith, magic sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 02:43:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1573172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wargoddess/pseuds/wargoddess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What am I?" he asks, staring into the fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Eluvian Darkly: The Question

**Author's Note:**

> As the title implies, this is another story set in the "An Eluvian Darkly" universe; you should probably read the main story before this one. If you'd rather not, short version is: in this timeline Hawke never made it back from Ostagar, Carver is the family mage and Bethany was his Templar until she died in Kirkwall, Cullen was Meredith's lover and fighting her to the death at the end of DA2 pretty much unhinged him. C&C met by chance, there was a road trip, stuff happened. Now they're a long-term item, both as lovers and as sworn Templar and mage -- but this version of Cullen is darker than canonical Cullen, and his scars haven't healed as well. Every so often, they ache.
> 
> The implied/referenced torture is to what occurred in DA:O -- Cullen being caged and tormented by a demon for however long. They're in Ferelden now, and Cullen is Knight Commander of the Tower at Kinloch.
> 
> This particular blurp was inspired by this image by JerHopp: http://quarkmaster.tumblr.com/post/81971731688/dragon-age-cullen-after-the-fight-by-jerhopp

     It is... strange, sometimes. The mundanity of his days now, after all he has endured.

     He walks through the Tower and sees clean marble walls where he remembers growing putrescence. Gazes at massive bookcases in the library and wonders how a handful of mages and junior Templars managed to get them righted after blasts of magic felled them. It took weeks, months, before he could comfortably step onto the Templars' level of the Tower -- into the stairwell where the blood mages kept him. Where his friends died. Where the demon

     no

     He looks at the floor that _must_ have soaked up some measure of his tears, his blood, his soul, and he wonders why it is so clean.

     It is strange. Everything is strange.

     He feels it too when he sits in his study, before the great window that overlooks the forest and hills beyond Lake Calenhad. There is bright sunlight on him, warming his legs through the armor; behind him, on the desk, the handful of papers he still needs to work on flutter in the afternoon breeze. Paperweights hold the important documents down. Something -- a scrap of leather he'd been using to scribble figures -- blows onto the floor. He hears it slip under the nearby sword-stand, and reminds himself to get it later. And then he thinks, _Why am I devoting myself to such unimportant things?_

     _Why am I here? I have sown the wind in pain and blood; where is my whirlwind to reap? Why am I alive? Why am I sane?_

     Perhaps he is not, he reflects.

     And that evening after his bath, as he stands damp and towel-clad before the hearth in his quarters, looking into the fire and remembering the sound of Meredith's flesh as evil magic seared it from within, he --

     He --

     Carver's behind him. Cullen's not sure when the mage came in, how long ago he came near. When Cullen truly lets himself brood he loses his sense of many things, but now Carver's pressed against him, with arms looped around Cullen's waist and his head resting on Cullen's shoulder. It's an undemanding thing that the mage does sometimes, comforting him unasked whenever he decides that Cullen needs it, and this is not the first time Cullen has found himself grateful for Carver's perceptiveness. Cullen is not a whole man. He is an agglomeration of pieces that swirl about each other and walk and talk and pretend to be a man. On some days, he comes a little more apart than on others.

     "What am I?" he asks, staring into the fire. He wants to look away, and can't.

     Carver straightens and moves around in front of Cullen, breaking his line of sight with the fire. Blinking, relieved, Cullen stares at him, and thinks for the umpteenth time how this lover is so is so unlike his previous one. It goes far beyond the simplest distinctions: that one Knight Commander and this one born apostate, her steeled blonde hair to Carver's night-black, female to his male, the gravitas of age versus perpetual boyhood. Where Meredith was cold, Carver is hot-tempered. Where she was as controlled and unstoppable as a dragon, Carver is a hawk: a fragile yet ferocious thing, tameable only insofar as he allows himself to be. For now, it is to Cullen's hand that he has offered his jesses, but Cullen is always aware that he must remain worthy of the honor.

     How did Cullen manage to win either of them? How is his heart, withered torn thing that it is, big enough to encompass them both?

     "You're mine," Carver says. He shrugs a little as he says it, as if there's never been any question. "That's what you are."

     Cullen blinks. And abruptly, the swirling pieces of him slow, settle, begin jigsawing into place.

     He takes Carver's hands. "Your Templar?"

     Carver snorts; they are each other's Templars, really. But he does not deny it. "My protector. My champion. My great raging mabari, too smart and proud for a leash, all particular about how his kaddis lies." He lifts their hands, brushes his fingertips over Cullen's mouth. He's smiling, but his gaze is serious. "Just... mine. My all of it. My everything."

     Cullen does not feel like everything. He does not feel like anything. He closes his eyes and sways beneath the light, brushing pressure of Carver's fingers.

     "I... need," he says. His voice wavers with the strength of it. He isn't all here.

     He can hear the seriousness in Carver's voice. "What d'you need?"

     He swallows. He doesn't really know. But he knows what will repair the lostness, the strangeness within him. "You."

     Carver doesn't even hesitate. His fingers curl 'round Cullen's and he walks backward; Cullen opens his eyes but bows his head, penitent as Carver takes the lead. Carver brings him into the bedroom, and the huge plush bed they share, and which Cullen has heard him brag about to other mages: _I'm shagging the Knight Commander, for sod's sake, 'course I need a big-arse bed to do it in_. When he pushes Cullen down into it, Cullen does not protest -- although the need he feels right now is not specifically for sex. He doesn't know what he needs. Carver will know the way of it, though, he feels certain. Carver always knows.

     He watches while Carver strips. The mage still doesn't like wearing robes, even after years in the Tower; he wears a getup of his own devising, leather and plate and enchanted fur in a bizarre, asymmetrical combination that nevertheless somehow works, aesthetically and otherwise. (Meredith wore custom armor made in Orlais by very expensive smiths. Carver sews his own out of other people's scraps.) Carver drops all of it to the floor with his usual lack of care, and beneath it he is his usual set of contrasts: the fine coloring of a nobleman and the hands of a farmer, the unblemished skin of a healer covering muscles earned in combat. Carver can give life with one hand and take it with the other -- and quietly Cullen worships him, knowing full well that at the end of his days when his sins are totted up, idolatry will be one of them. It cannot be helped.

     Then Carver flows toward him, and despite his mood Cullen cannot help shivering with a flash of sudden lust, which makes him twitch and half-move to cover himself through the towel before Carver sees and teases him for it... But Carver does see, and says nothing. He climbs onto the bed and nudges Cullen's hand out of the way so he can straddle Cullen, and then he bends and takes Cullen's face in his hands. There's nothing sexual in this. For long moments Carver does nothing, smoothing his hands over Cullen's cheeks, tracing beard-edges with his thumbs. He presses his forehead to Cullen's, breathes in as Cullen is breathing out, attunes himself to Cullen in some additional way that Cullen cannot fathom. Cullen relaxes, surprised to realize he has tensed.

     But then, he is always a little tense with mages, isn't he? Even Carver, who loves him. Carver, who could do such terrible things to Cullen.

     "You scared the shit out of me, first we met," Carver says. Cullen blinks at this reminder that the fear doesn't just go one way between them. Carver sits up, pulling Cullen's hand with him, drawing the fingers to his lips. It is terrifying, and also the opposite of terrifying, when Carver opens his demon-blue eyes to gaze down at him.

     "It was like looking into the face of some monster in the Fade. Like something empty, I thought at first -- And then I saw you weren't empty at all. You were worse. Something was wrong with you."

     Cullen remembers. And -- well. Carver was right, back then. He's still right now. What is Cullen? The monster in the dark.

     "Know when it changed?" Carver slides fingertips down Cullen's forearm, kneading the muscles there gently. "The next morning. I'd cooked a rabbit for you, and you fell on it like a starved dog. I couldn't help thinking what you must've been through, how long you'd been wandering, to need a scrawny winter-thin rabbit that badly. And I thought..." Carver shrugs; the candle-light limns the flex of his own muscles. "I figured, maybe it wasn't that something was _wrong_ ; maybe it was just that not enough had gone _right_ for you, lately, yeah? Maybe you'd just stopped expecting anything good from the world or, or people." He takes Cullen's other hand, rests them both on his shoulders, starts a steady massage down Cullen's arms. "And I wanted to be good for you. Just like that. It's how I knew you could be my Templar."

     His hands slide over Cullen's biceps, grip his deltoids. Cullen's hands twitch on Carver's shoulders. The lost feeling has faded somewhat; he is beginning to focus. And though Carver has been careful to keep sex an open question, the flash of lust that Cullen felt earlier has not faded. It is beginning to build, in fact.

     Carver says, "Can I use magic on you?"

     It is something that Cullen rarely allows, for many reasons. Carver rarely asks -- and never does it without asking, except to save Cullen's life -- for the same reasons. They are united in their distate for, refusal to rely on, magic. That he is asking now, though... Cullen licks his lips, swallows, makes himself answer. "You may."

     Carver nods, and a moment later the tingle of magic is almost too subtle and delicate for Cullen to notice. Not nearly as irritating as magic usually is, along his lyrium-sensitized nerves. The magic mellows even more as Carver adjusts the potency and slides hands over Cullen's chest. Just a mild muscle-relaxant spell; the flow of it is like a low hum, almost vibrating. Languor spreads through him and Cullen exhales, letting his eyes drift half-closed.

     "I wanted you for everything," Carver continues. His voice is barely above a whisper. "My Templar. My sparring partner. My friend. Maker, I wanted to tumble you almost as soon as I figured you wouldn't try to hurt me -- and sod it all, later I even wanted that." He blushes a little. Cullen does too. Carver does not bring the wrist-cuffs to Cullen often. When he does, begging for pain and control, Cullen treats Carver's offering with all the reverence that it deserves. Carver shifts backward a little, perhaps to move off Cullen's cock, which now tents the towel shamelessly. "But I wanted it -- you -- because you were _safe_. You keep _me_ safe. You're everything I ever needed, Cull."

     _What am I?_ The man who keeps Carver safe. The thing Carver needs.

     Carver's thumbs move along the lines of Cullen's obliques. Cullen is ticklish here, and the purr of Carver's magic makes his hips buck a little; beneath the towel, his cock makes the flip from downward-curved suggestion to upright declaration, its tip peeking above the towel's edge. Carver flicks the towel out of the way and begins stroking little circles into the underside of the tip with his thumb. The magic is throbby-sweet, like warm strong tea on a sore tooth. Cullen cannot help undulating a little, sighing out a low breath. But then Carver moves his hand away and it is terrible. "Please," he blurts, then is surprised that he has said this.

     Carver blinks, then smiles, putting his thumb back in place. (Cullen nods thanks and bites his lip, embarrassed by his own wanting even as his body writhes again, helplessly.) Now the fingers of Carver's other hand are sliding up the centerline of Cullen's body, pushing magic in a little wavelet as they travel. (It's not healing magic anymore; it's something else, soothing and teasing the lyrium in Cullen's blood.) Now Carver leans down and murmurs, breath tickling Cullen's throat, "I learned this for you. Wanted to be a bloody primal mage, remember -- but you wanted me a healer, so I am. I learned everything I could about how the body works; if I work at it I could turn a man inside-out with magic alone. But all I _want_ to do is this." His magic pulses and Cullen cries out, startled into pleasure. "Yeah."

     He pulses again, and then again. His hand has splayed out to cover the middle of Cullen's chest. Through his own panting, Cullen can feel his heart pounding against Carver's palm. It should not be erotic, having a mage this close to a vital organ. Yet it is as if everything affiliated with his heart has become an erogenous zone: his arteries and veins, the rush of his blood, the thumping sound. Somehow Carver has spread the sensitivity of Cullen's cock throughout his whole body. And now Carver's pulses are in time with Cullen's heartbeats, and Cullen -- who rarely lets himself make a sound during lovemaking -- is moaning ceaselessly, helplessly, tossing his head, dragging at the sheets.

     "This is what I'm supposed to be afraid of," Carver whispers against Cullen's chin. "Maybe it'll corrupt me, playing god. Pride. But bloody _look_ at you." His lips brush Cullen's; Cullen feels this right down to his balls and makes a pleading sound. "Send me to the sodding Void, then."

     He sits up and plants his hand on Cullen's chest more firmly (though still the finger, only the finger, down below) and braces himself. He smiles, and there is nothing of a demon in him, but it is definitely wickedness that Cullen sees in the mage's gleaming blue eyes. Then he pours his magic into Cullen, like it's water, like he knows how empty Cullen is; pours it and pulses it and _glows_ with it in an unending torrent. And Cullen _screams_.

     It is the cry that the demon wrung from him, he will reflect later, because that was the true horror of what the creature did. It gave him pleasure greater than anything he'd ever known. That was why its offer was so hard to refuse. But this --

     "Tell me when you want it to end," Carver's voice whispers through Cullen's howls, his mindless ecstasy. "I'll give you everything, otherwise."

     -- this

     _this_

     THIS

     **THIS OH MAKER THIS PLEASE ENOUGH ENOUGH ENOUGH**

     The instant the first _enough_ leaves Cullen's mouth, Carver ends it. He takes Cullen down gently, gradually, which is perfect because Cullen needs gentleness and care if he is to be put back together properly. When Carver at last ends the mana flow, Cullen lies twitching and sobbing quietly for some while afterward. Carver shifts to lie beside him, stroking away his tremors and kissing off his tears until finally the tremors cease, and the tears end. He is able to think again, slowly.

     It. Was. It was. He swallows, closes his eyes, thinks _Blessed are those_ and can get no further, then tries again. It was. So much better. Than.

     _So much better than the demon._

     It is a strange thought. Everything of Cullen's life is strange, however, so why not this, too? Why not a mage using the power of the Fade to wipe away the last marks left by a denizen of the Fade upon his soul?

     No. Not just the power of the Fade. What Carver has given him is a different sort of power altogether. And it must be admitted at last, he thinks as the tingles fade and warmth remains, as he looks into Carver's face and sees that the mage is smiling but exhausted, and as he understands suddenly that when Carver said he would give Cullen _everything_ , he meant it --

     -- Yes. It must be admitted. _So much better than Meredith, too._

     So much better to have pleasure offered unstinted, and untainted by the demand for his soul in recompense.

     Cullen lifts a hand to cup Carver's cheek. "That was reckless."

     Carver shrugs. It's a weak shrug; he can barely keep himself propped up on one elbow. "Felt like it."

     Sitting up, Cullen shifts them, pushing Carver onto his back so he can rest. He gets up briefly to go and clean himself, and on the way back brings a plate of biscuits leftover from their meal and a cup of long-tepid tea. Carver sighs when Cullen makes him sit up to eat and drink, but he does it without complaint. Then Cullen tugs loose the rumpled sheets and curls close to tuck Carver in and keep him warm. And indeed, Carver's already shivering. Mages who overextend themselves, especially healers, can catch a chill, faint, or worse. But Cullen cannot chastise Carver in earnest. Some part of Cullen that was questing and lost and unmoored is now safe and home, and that is Carver's doing.

     "I am yours," Cullen says, when they have lain quiet awhile. "That _is_ what I am."

     Carver, eyes already shut, smiles lazily. "'Course. Like I said."

     Cullen holds him until he relaxes into sleep. In the morning, he will notify his men that he needs a day for care of his fool mage, though they may of course interrupt him in the event of an emergency. He will bring Carver breakfast in bed and then carry him to the bath and afterward administer him a oiled massage. Carver being Carver, Cullen knows he will need to make certain the massage is sufficiently carnal to convince the mage to stay in bed and regain his strength. He is no mage himself, but he thinks he can make a proper sated wreck of Carver if that is what it takes.

     This is who he is, now. This is his meaning, the glue that seals the cracks in him. _Templar_ is the what and _Carver's Templar_ is the who and _Carver_ is the why. There is nothing strange about this. For as long as these things remain his foundation, he can stand. He is anchored and still.

     "Yours," he murmurs to the air, gazing at the arched ceiling. He strokes his sleeping mage's hair with one hand. It is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, if you're wondering, the "getup of his own devising" that Carver wears is the Armor of the Champion, mage version. 'Course it's not called that here. I just figure Carver and his brother would have similar tastes in clothing/armor, when it gets right down to it.


End file.
